Verge staffers react to the iPhone 16E: what we love and don’t love

Apple has launched its new iPhone 16E with an updated design, additional features — and no home button or MagSafe charging. This revamped version of the company’s budget phone will be going for $599 and will include a USB-C port, a notch, a customizable Action Button, a fast A18 chip, and lots of extras. So what does that do for those who might have been looking forward to a smaller phone? Is the new Action Button a good thing? Will you miss MagSafe?

We asked the staff of The Verge for their first impressions of the iPhone 16E. Of course, we will be running a full review of the phone, which will ship on February 28th. But meanwhile, here are some of the feelings that the news has generated in some of our iPhone users.

You can’t go Home again

Look, I’m just as much a fan of physical home buttons as anyone, but maybe it’s time we say our goodbyes for good. The swipe-up gestures for unlocking, returning to the homescreen, or managing apps feels natural and fluid now. I sure don’t miss the excessive bezels, and I appreciate the reclaimed screen real estate to enjoy every dot of edge-to-edge OLED goodness I can. And you know what? As much as I hate the notch, it adds more to the overall aesthetic and user experience than it detracts from it, so I’m fine with that tradeoff, too. – Quentyn Kennemer, commerce writer

A customizable Action Button

I love that Apple brought the Action Button to its new affordable iPhone 16E. It’s one of the better hardware features Apple introduced in recent years. It launched on the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max and was included on all iPhone 16 models in 2024. I have mine set to launch a flashlight (and use it all the time), but you can set it to launch other apps, too, like Apple Translate, the camera app, shortcuts, and more. I’m sort of surprised Apple included it since previous iPhone SE mid-year launches usually included a newer processor but in a body a few years old. – Todd Haselton, deputy editor, reviews and commerce

MagSafe is missing

That’s a no for me. Not so much for MagSafe charge speed — wired is always faster anyway — but because the magnetic ring is so handy. You can always add a magnetic case, though, so if the camera is decent enough, I guess it’s not the end of the world. – Nathan Edwards, senior reviews editor

OLED at a nice 6.1 inches

As someone who currently wields a 6.7-inch brick of a phone, I’ve started to long for my iPhone 6S days. At 6.06 inches, the iPhone 16E’s screen size seems like the perfect medium between too big and too small. It’s bigger than the iPhone SE released in 2022 but roughly the same as the standard 6.1-inch iPhone 16 (though it’s also 0.1mm narrower and 0.7mm shorter). That will hopefully be a plus for those of us who want to put our phones in our pockets.

And while the iPhone 16E may be (slightly) smaller and cheaper than the iPhone 16, but Apple isn’t skimping out on quality: unlike the last iPhone SE, the iPhone 16E comes with an OLED display panel. It’s nice to see Apple bringing some of its premium features to its budget-friendly devices. – Emma Roth, news writer

Speeding ahead with an A18 chip

I’m slightly relieved to see the new iPhone 16E uses the current A18 processor found in the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus. Previous iPhone SE models also borrowed the latest chips from the pricier iPhones of their time, but there was a part of me that wondered if Apple might surprise us with something like a last-gen A17. (Remember when the iPhone 15 and 15 Plus got year-old holdovers from the 14 Pro?) 

The A18 in the 16E does have one fewer GPU core (four instead of five), but I doubt anyone’s really going to feel that difference. Maybe if you do some side-by-side comparisons with high-end games like Resident Evil 4, but nobody buying an iPhone 16E is going to do that (and apparently nobody’s really buying those games anyway).

Having the latest-gen processor means the iPhone 16E should see years of support, which is one of the benefits of buying an iPhone. And it’s arguably more important these days now that some Android manufacturers have gotten their act together and promised up to seven years of software updates on some of their latest models. – Antonio G. Di Benedetto, reviewer

Bye-bye Lightning, hello USB-C

I love my iPhone 12 Mini, but I’ve also been thinking about upgrading because I want an iPhone with a USB-C port. I probably don’t actually need most of the fancier features on the main iPhone 16 lineup, so the new iPhone 16E seems like it could serve me well for many years.

But do I really want to pay $599 mostly for a USB-C port? My iPhone 12 Mini still works well, especially after I replaced the battery last year. My Lightning cables still work fine for charging, as does my Lightning-equipped MagSafe Duo. I don’t really need a USB-C port for any other reason except convenience.

I think I’m just going to hang on to my iPhone 12 Mini and see what’s in store for the iPhone 17 lineup. But I don’t think I’ll wait much longer to get a USB-C iPhone.  – Jay Peters, news editor

An easy unlock with Face ID

At this point, switching between phones is actually pretty simple. Both Android and iOS have made upgrades easy, and you can even switch between operating systems with a cable and a couple of hours. But every time I switch to a device without Face ID or a similar gaze-based authentication system, my muscle memory collapses. Whether I’m paying for stuff, accessing passwords, or trying to lock myself out of social media apps, I use the biometric system more than I realize — and face unlock is faster, more reliable, and just easier. I love the tactility and smashability of a home button, but I’ll happily trade it for that instantaneous, my phone is already unlocked feeling you get from Face ID. – David Pierce, editor-at-large

Now with a notch

This design change means the SE finally feels like a modern take on an affordable phone: extremely powerful, packed with AI (for better or worse), and with a full-screen design that doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb.

The notch isn’t exactly Apple’s bleeding edge — I guess we’ll have to wait a few more years for the Dynamic Island to work its way down to the SE line — but it brings with it both Face ID and a lot more screen real estate. It is the end of an era, though: there’s no longer any iPhone on the market that has an uninterrupted display. – Dominic Preston, news editor

Only one rear camera? No problem

It isn’t remotely surprising to me that the iPhone 16E only provides one rear camera. Not only does that mirror the 2022 iPhone SE (which sported a 12-megapixel sensor, compared to the iPhone 16E’s beefier 48-megapixel sensor), but cameras also tend to have a noticeable correlation with phone price. This is an ideal choice for people who don’t need all the fancy camera hardware provided on powerful, more expensive flagship phones.

Photography-driven creative folk typically splurge on the latest Pro or standard iPhone model anyway or use a dedicated camera. The design and performance of the iPhone 16E have already been modernized in line with most of Apple’s current generational lineup — any more and it might as well just be an iPhone 16. – Jess Weatherbed, news writer

The right price for a proper phone

It’s been a long time since Apple offered an “affordable” iPhone that doesn’t require making massive feature tradeoffs for the price. That seems to be changing in the new $599 iPhone 16E, and it’s about time. The Android ecosystem has had some really nice options around $500 for the past few years from Google, Samsung, and OnePlus — all with big, modern screens, plenty of storage, and night mode in the camera app. That’s just not a combination you could get from a new iPhone for under $800 over the last three years. 

Some folks might be disappointed by losing the home button or having to switch to USB-C (one of us… one of us…), but I think bringing a modern feature set to the iPhone SE and keeping the price relatively affordable more than makes up for the loss. I’d love for it to be a bit cheaper, and not offering MagSafe is a weird choice. But this might be the phone that finally gets my husband to upgrade from his XR, and for that, I am grateful. – Allison Johnson, reviews writer